Atena Daemi, hope for many in Iran, must be freed!

Atena Daemi is known as an Iranian anti-execution campaigner and many, among them Amnesty International, are calling for her release. Fighting against executions is just one part of Atena’s work however; there is a lot more to her and the reasons why she has been subjected to the worst of ill-treatments by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Atena Daemi stands for life and humanity – the total opposite of the Islamic regime’s core essence, inhumanity and injustice. She is a children's rights, a women's rights and an anti-execution campaigner. She fights for the rights of the first and most vulnerable victims of the Islamic regime and for the life of those who are condemned to execution.

She keeps writing even in prison under the harshest conditions, and inspires many to fight for humanity.

Atena Daemi’s father was with her when she was sentenced in the Islamic regime’s court of injustice. Her father Hosein Daemi wrote:

I'll never forget when they brought Atena to court.

Judge Moghiseh told her: Are you against execution?

Atena: Yes, I am against execution.

Moghiseh: It's none of your business, we execute whoever we want. And those “human rights people” can't stop us.

Atena: One day you will have to answer for those innocent people you hang, and that day is coming soon.

Moghiseh expelled Atena from the courtroom and sentenced her to 14 years in prison.

Atena Daemi was arrested in October 2014.

She spent the first 86 days in solitary confinement.

She was moved to Evin prison on 18^th January 2015.

She was sentenced on 14^th March 2015 to 14 years for ‘propaganda against the regime, conspiracy against national security, insulting the leader of the regime, insulting Khomeini, and concealing evidence.’

Interrogations, accusations, court of injustice, solitary confinement, torture, long prison sentence, harassment and arrest of her family members, persecution, and more torture for Atena Daemi because she points out the problem, the Islamic regime and its inhumanity, and proposes the solution, humanity.

In addition to campaigning against execution and for women's rights, Atena is a passionate defender of children's rights. This is what she wants to change:

In Iran

• over 10,000 infants die every year as a direct consequence of poverty
• over 7,500,000 children are excluded from school
• over 500,000 Afghan children are denied education
• over 287,000 children are married off – the Islamic regime's law allows it
• over 5,000,000 children live on the deprived and unsafe margins of cities
• Tens of thousands are exposed to drugs. 1189 children were treated for overdoses in 2015
• 71 children are awaiting execution in Iran
• 1500 children live with their mothers in prison
• 90% of children in government care are sexually abused
• 26,909 cases of domestic abuse against children were reported in 2015
• 57% of schools in Iran are unsafe

These statistics are from the regime's census; the reality is disastrous. Tens of thousands of children are homeless and face all sorts of dangers including rape, exploitation in the drug trade, being victims of the body parts trade, everyday humiliation, and hunger.

It's for her uncompromising defence of the lives of the deprived and bringing hope to them that she is subjected to the most inhuman treatment. Atena Daemi is treated so cruelly because of what she stands for: bringing moments of happiness to children who are deprived of love, who are destitute, forced to work, forced to marry, forced out of schools because they are poor or foreigners, forced to live in slums.

The hope for change that Atena brings to society disarms the regime which has remained in power by taking away hope and terrorising society with executions and the imposition of brutal poverty.

There are no numbers or words to adequately reflect the “depth of the inhumanity”, but there are people like Atena who risk their life to change the life of just one child if they can. The ones who endure torture, solitary confinement, immense pressure and whose messages from behind bars are all about “passion for humanity” and “a better world for children”.

The enmity of the Islamic regime of Iran against Atena and other rights activists is because of what they bring to society: the hope of freedom from ’gender apartheid’ and its rules, the smile on a child's face and the experience of love. That experience of compassion by those who are not supposed to know about kindness and love shakes the foundation of the Islamic Republic. How can the Islamic regime secure its future, its ideology and its rules, if people experience humanity and find hope?

Atena Daemi stands for the humanity that we all share and the ideals we all hold dearly. We call on all international humanitarian organisations and workers' organisations to demand the immediate and unconditional release of Atena Daemi.

Worker-communist Party of Iran

18 December 2018

Hamid Taqvaee’s message to sugar cane workers of Haft Tapeh and steelworkers of Ahvaz, Iran

I send my greetings to you militant workers of Haft Tapeh and the steelworkers of Ahvaz. Your steadfast strike and struggles echo the demands and sentiments of all the workers and people of Iran. The methods of your struggle are methods that can become a blueprint for all the workers and people of Iran. You are demanding the payment of unpaid wages, you have come out against poverty and corruption, you are calling for workers to get organised and take over the running of their affairs. These are the sentiments of the people of Iran, the sentiments of the working class in Iran.

The methods of your struggle can become a model for all workers and various protest movements in society. Your families have joined your struggles and doubly strengthened your fight. By holding general assemblies and organising your struggle on a workers’ council basis, in my view you have taken a huge step forward; you have raised the banner of workers’ councils and have demanded the direct exercise of the will of workers through their council. This is a demand, slogan and aim of the whole workers’ movement and the people in Iran engaged in protest.

On the other hand, the unity and solidarity that you have shown between the two sectors of workers, i.e. the steelworkers in Ahvaz and the sugar cane workers in Haft Tapeh, if not unprecedented, is exceptional in the history of the workers’ movement in Iran. It is over three weeks, nearly a month, now that two important sectors of workers have been on strike and during your strike you have come out united and in solidarity with each other and in support of each other’s demands, slogans and struggle. This solidarity can be widened to include larger sections of the working class in Iran.

The government, faced with this powerful wave of your struggle, has no choice other than, like always, to resort to threats, repression and prison. But, as you have said in your slogans, even threats, repression and prison have no effect, and have only led to the strengthening of your struggle.

It has been reported that Ali Nejati [the head of the union of sugar cane workers] and also his son Peyman Nejati have been arrested, while their house was raided and they were brutally beaten up. It has also been reported that Esmail Bakhshi [a popular leader and representative of the sugar cane workers] has been subjected to torture and physical abuse in prison. This outrage should be answered firmly, and we should stand up to these savages, demanding the immediate release of Esmail Bakhshi, Sepideh Gholiyan, Ali Nejati and Peyman Nejati; an urgent demand that should be forced onto the government. Up to this point, your struggle and the demand for the release of Bakhshi has given rise to a huge wave of support, both in Iran and internationally. Workers’ organisations, workers’ rights personalities, writers, students, retired workers, teachers and civil rights activists and figures have started petitions and issued statements and held protest gatherings to call for the immediate release of Bakhshi, and actively supported your struggle.

Also, internationally, many trade unions, in Europe and Canada, have called for the release of Bakhshi and supported your struggles. This wave of support must be extended further, and the Islamic Republic forced to release Esmail Bakhshi, Ali Nejati, Peyman Nejati and Sepideh Gholiyan immediately and unconditionally. This fight must be continued until the release of all jailed workers and all political prisoners in Iran. In the hope of victory and success!

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Hamid Taqvaee is the leader of the Worker-communist Party of Iran (WPI) 

This is the English transcript of Hamid Taqvaee's video message in Farsi

Please note: Peyman Nejati have been released in the meantime